For GQ's April cover, the G I R L artist and producer talks to Zach Baron about politics (he's calling 2016 for Hillary), the Tea Party, the hat-collection clamoring, and losing the Best Song Oscar

Miami, early March: The sun is bright overhead—no winter here—and Pharrell Williams is driving his Rolls-Royce Phantom through South Beach, a pharaoh at the wheel of a spaceship. Today's buffalo hat is midnight blue. G I R L, his second solo record, is number two in the country, behind Rick Ross's Mastermind, a situation Pharrell can live with, even be proud of. "I'm cool," he says. "It's, like, number one in seventy countries." Anyway, he says, Rick Ross is a friend. He lives here in Miami too.

He makes a right turn, and with no prompt starts discoursing about a gym he's invested in, over in Coral Gables. It is, or will be, a place for women—a sanctuary where "they can find their inner beauty and find their inner challenging spirit and find their bravery, all by dancing, and then at the same time getting fit." It is breathtaking to hear Pharrell talk when he's in visionary mode. He's describing the dance classes at this gym, setting a scene for me: "You're going to stand around, and you're going to see loads and loads of women doing, you know, trap dances and squatting low..." His wife Helen, sitting in the backseat with me, gently points out to Pharrell that he is driving on the left side of a two-way street. It is breathtaking to watch Pharrell drive, too, in an are we going to live?? kind of way. He swerves back onto the right side of the road, then takes an abrupt left in front of an oncoming taxi. People honk ecstatically when they see him at the wheel. They're not even mad.

Back in January, while wearing a similarly improbable and now-notorious hat, he won four Grammys, including one for Producer of the Year; next he went to the Oscars, to perform "Happy," the number-one song in the country then and now, and just lost out on an Academy Award to Frozen's "Let It Go"—more on that in a second. After twenty years of making hits for other people, of being "the guy next to the guy," he's finally become the guy himself. The hits come with his name on them now. He is ubiquitous—there he is, gamely parrying Amy Adams's haunting snake-dance in GIF form, or on the radio, engaged in a breathless Michael Jackson-off with Justin Timberlake. He may well be the most beloved man in the country at the moment. He and I have been talking at various points all winter, in Los Angeles and now here in Miami, where the producer-turned-artist has still more to say: about losing that Oscar, Hillary Clinton's chances at the presidency, FOX's Cosmos—"I wanted to be a part of it so bad, but I didn't know Seth MacFarlane," he says, ruefully—and beyond. Below are excerpts from those conversations.

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GQ: Originally G I R L was going to come out in May. Why did you end up moving up the release to March 3?
Because Columbia just was like, "You're almost done with it; you're doing the Oscars. There's almost a billion people watching: Why not give it to them then?" I was like, "Alright, cool."

You were nominated for an Oscar that night, but didn't win. How badly did you want it?
Well, trust me: when they read the results, my face was...frozen. But then I thought about it, and I just decided just to...let it go.

How do you feel about that song?
That song?

"Let It Go"—you just said it.
How do you feel about the song?

I thought "Happy" would've been a more interesting choice.
Is it going to be here for ten years—that song from Frozen?

Seems like that happens a lot with that particular Oscar category.
Well, I asked you what your opinion was, and you're entitled to it, and I hope you print it. Did you like my answer?

I thought your answer was great.
My face was frozen, but I just decided to—

Oh, I got it.
—I just decided to let it go.

This is your second solo record, after 2006's In My Mind—did this one feel different?
Way different. In My Mind was just purpose-oriented toward, like, competing and being like my peers—the Jays and the Puffs of the world, who make great music. But their purposes and their intentions are just completely different than what I have discovered in myself that I wanted to achieve in this one. So it makes it easier to sing about, because I don't gotta sing about myself. Jay's good at that. He's great at it. I began to sound so self-serving and so self-satisfied, whereas he can do it and make you feel inspirational about who he is and what his intention is.

In retrospect, were you unhappy back then?
Of course. Because I felt like I had amassed this big body of work, most—not all—but most of which was just about self-aggrandizement, and I wasn't proud of it. So I couldn't be proud of the money that I had; I couldn't be proud of all the stuff that I had. I was thankful, but what did it mean? What did I do? And at this point, where I came from, I'm just throwing it in that kid's face, instead of saying, "Look at all the fish I have, and look how much we're going to eat." It should've been—at least a part of it—teaching them how to fish. That's why you gotta give it to Jay, because he's been talking to—you know, he's been telling everybody: "If I did it, you could do it, too." So I did a little bit of that, but I was so occupied with, like, the competitive spirit—and not in the right way.
Competitive with whom?
For real? Nobody. But in my mind, you couldn't tell me that I wasn't competing, you know? You only can compete with yourself.

How do you let go of that competitiveness?
Because I think it's so much more interesting to go inward, to experience the outer space that was built for you.

Can we hear more about the outer space that was built for you?
The aether. The ultimate connection between time and space is time and space. Without time, there is no measurement of space. Without space, there is no measurement of time. We need them both to coexist. And the theory of everything is that everything exists at the same time, is connected. So we're connected. Are we connected physically now? No. But are we physically connected in this moment? Yes. When you look back in this memory, the part of this fabric: yes! So there's a lot of allusion that just goes over people's heads, so they lose the importance of certain aspects.

I'm curious why that's something you could know now but not, say, in 2004, or when your first record came out, in 2006.
No, because in 2004, I was still used to making money, going, "Whoa." I mean, it's understandable—2004, you know, I was 31 years old. I didn't know no better. I'm about to be 41, so I understand the value of life. The value of life is the value of life, not "life" the word itself. It's the definition. It's where all the life is. Life is about definitions, not about the words. Words are just incantations.

In retrospect, how long did you feel lost?
I don't know. I think that "Rumpshaker" came out in like the end of '92.

So basically you're talking about fifteen years of not knowing any better—practically your entire career.
Yeah.

When you say that it makes me reconsider your whole catalog before G I R L. It makes me wonder if all that music is itself unhappy.
Yeah, but I didn't know what happiness was. My definition of happiness was based on what my peers quantified as happiness: boats—you know, material stuff. But then I realized I had a platform; I would meet kids, and meet girls and women who would always point out the inspirational stuff. They would always talk about those songs. I'll never forget: There was this girl that told me her brother had died, and he was a huge N.E.R.D. fan, and he got in a car crash. When they looked in the car, the song that was playing was "Run to the Sun." That scarred me—in a healing way. Because "Run to the Sun" was huge for me with my grandmother. You know, you hear the intention in that.

But that's what people would come up and talk about, those inspirational things more than anything else. Sure, sometimes it'd be like, "Yo, man, that beat on 'Drop It Like It's Hot'!" or "That 'Grindin'' beat!" or "I Just Wanna Love U!"—whatever. But mostly, people would emote about those records that had substance and purpose and intention: I could feel that. Like you just said: After you've heard this body of work, you go back and listen to the other one: It feels naked and cold and empty. So I didn't know. I didn't know what happiness was.